HARRISBURG (AP) — The Republican-controlled Pennsylvania Senate on Monday approved legislation to prevent school children from being required to get a COVID-19 vaccination to attend school.
The bill passed on party lines, 28-21, and goes to the House of Representatives. Neither the state nor any school district in Pennsylvania require the COVID-19 vaccination to attend school.
In the case of other infectious diseases, school children in Pennsylvania can invoke medical, religious or philosophical exemptions for other immunization requirements.
Under state law, those immunizations that are required as a condition of attendance at school in Pennsylvania include doses for chicken pox, polio, hepatitis B, diphtheria, and measles, mumps and rubella. In some cases, evidence of immunity is acceptable.
The sponsor, Sen. Michelle Brooks, R-Mercer, argued that other vaccines required by schools weren’t approved under “emergency use authorization” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. However, her bill makes no mention of the vaccine’s emergency authorization.
Another supporter, Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, said the state’s acting health secretary had testified over the summer that 14 school-aged children out of an estimated 1.7 million had died from COVID-19. That, he said, put it on par with the seasonal flu, bird flu and swine flu.
Democrats argued that there is no mandate to prevent, and that, in any case, a COVID-19 vaccination can save lives.
Kid-sized doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine are just now rolling out to children ages 5 to 11.
